Thursday, 19 March 2015

#Budget2015 The cuts to public services projected in yesterday's Budget speech by Tory Chancellor George Osborne are unprecedented and a timely TUC analysis confirms that 'departmental spending is set to fall by 5.4 per cent in 2016-17 and 5.1 per cent in 2017-18. That’s a rate of spending cuts that is 2.4 percentage points more severe than in any year of austerity to date. Even in 2011-12, when service cuts were at their most significant, spending fell by 3 per cent of GDP.
The cuts the Chancellor has planned for 2016/17 and 2017/28 are 80% greater than those we have seen before.' Rather than embrace austerity-continuity in 2015/16 and austerity-lite thereafter, Labour must offer a clear alternative to the destruction of public services. And all UNISON branches must get behind the union's strategy of encouraging members to vote out the current Government on May 7:http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2015/03/the-worst-public-spending-cuts-are-still-to-come/

Sunday, 15 March 2015

'There was absolutely no need for anything to do with austerity. It is really a political project which has been carried out in the UK for the last 30 or 40 years. It has eroded the purchasing power in the hands of ordinary people... it has resulted in concentration of wealth.. there has been an organised humiliation of normal people.' says Prem Sikka, Professor of Accountancy at Essex University, in a video from a recent Morning Star conference in Glasgow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAtj3ZsFRM